22. On the allegation that the phenomenon of “divergence” may not have been
properly taken into account when expressing the uncertainty associated
with reconstructions, we are satisfied that it is not hidden and that the subject is openly and extensively discussed in the literature, including CRU papers.

This is entirely why Brat went to climatefraudit. There you can only see the GoodFact. The facts that say what make him feel Good.

”You responded with “tree ring growth”, but since “hide the decline” was, BY YOU YOURSELF asserted as something to do with the graph of temperature reconstructions, what declined cannot, repeat CANNOT, be “tree ring growth”.

Here is the shorter Wow:

“What declined cannot, repeat CANNOT, be tree-ring growth, because the graph is about temperature.”

You’ll find it under the question “What does “hide the decline” refer to?”, and the answer: “The decline actually refers to a decline in tree-ring density at certain high-latitude locations since 1960.”

22. On the allegation that the phenomenon of “divergence” may not have been
properly taken into account when expressing the uncertainty associated
with reconstructions, we are satisfied that it is not hidden and that the subject is openly and extensively discussed in the literature, including CRU papers.

But, despite all the protestations of how much you knew of these things, you don’t seem to actually know anything about them.

Muir’s report alluded to them.

You claimed you knew the Muir report.

But you don’t know that the decline of tree ring data was NOT hidden, despite this being IN THE MUIR REPORT.

This is pretty conclusive proof you were lying (yeah, big shock!) about knowing the report.

Yes, dear readers: please do click on the URL Wow has thoughtfully provided and verify for yourselves that the quote Wow attributed to me was a figment of his / her own fraud. You’ll notice not only that the words themselves are a ventriloquism, but that the idea expressed thereby is also Wow’s invention.

ventriloquism
Web definitions
the art of projecting your voice so that it seems to come from another source (as from a ventriloquist’s dummy).

Hmm. How about this:

par·a·phrase
/ˈparəˌfrāz/
Verb
Express the meaning of (the writer or speaker or something written or spoken) using different words, esp. to achieve greater clarity.
Noun
A rewording of something written or spoken by someone else.

Or were you so very busy pretending that there were investigations “avoiding” ‘hide the decline’ that you meant to say

“All 6 investigated ‘hide the decline’? No, some did, but some didn’t”

And instead ranted about some bloody conspiracy theory (making your comment about “conspiracy theory much?” rather unaware of you)?

Or is it the fact that you thought none investigated it (hence why there was no change to the graph or censure for it)?

Meanwhile, the WELL KNOWN divergence problem and the decline of the utility of some tree species in certain locations as proxies for temperature in locations and times that no thermometers were available, was discussed widely and brought out in graphs like this:

wow, what do YOU think jones meant with “hiding the decline”? Why did he wrote ““I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” if he actually didn’t hide something?

One of the reasons, I’m sure, that Monty Python’s Black Knight skit remains consistently popular is that there are an endless queue of “Brads” always willing to act it out while vainly hoping for a different ending

I’s called vernacular PantieZ. A form of wordplay used by those at least semi-educated and upwards to whom language isn’t a chore and can be used freely and playfully. The private emails remember, were between friends and colleagues.

Something those – like you no doubt – who can only read until their lips get tired, won’t comprehend.

I’m going out now, so I’m gonna kill this connection.
You go call the police, moron.

They insist this email is talking about the temperature anomaly graph solely. They even insist that they accept that there is NO DECLINE IN TEMPERATURES in that record. But they insist that there is some DECLINE that is hidden on a graph of TEMPERATURES and this is the tree growth figures.

WHICH ARE NOT TEMPERATURES.

But they’ve already admitted there is no decline in temperatures.

So there can’t be a decline being hidden on that graph.

But they insist that there MUST be a reason for using the word “hide”.

Why?

So they can pretend to be dismayed at the crime they want to insist is there.

It’s a form of dissonance, that';s the only way I can understand it. All those blogs, run by all those kindly old men (and they are all old men), all laymen, supplementing their pensions by being professional liars for an industry for which money is no object and electronic media cheaper and easier than cheap and easy.

It’s only when “Brad” ventures out in the real world that the limits of his boundaries become clear. My guess is the dissonance will dictate an overdue flouncing to maintain the integrity of what’s already rigidly believed. An exciting conspiracy story where the scientists are out to steal their burger jobs, take their women and force them into gay marriage. Or whatever version of it paranoid numbskulls believe nowadays.

Contrarians thrive on misdirection. They depend heavily on forcing discussion onto a manufactured ‘scandal’ which wasn’t. As long as you let them direct the conversation, you are playing their game, which is to direct attention away from the fact that they have no coherent scientific counter-argument to mount against the scientific consensus on AGW.

Interestingly, the rest of us don’t feel compelled to play other versions of this game. For example, we could bang on *forever* about how Spencer and Christy only admitted the full extent of the errors in their UAH TLT product in 2005 when they were forced to do so by Mears and Wentz at RSS.

Suddenly, ‘no tropospheric warming according to satellite data’ was revealed to be wrong. And this was a major event. The satellite record was being extensively used as ‘evidence’ that there were problems with both the surface temperature measurements and with climate models.

Given that Spencer and Christy are *sceptics*, we could argue vociferously and endlessly that what they did was suspicious. Imagine: ‘biased scientists manipulate satellite data to hide warming’ etc etc

Now although some unkind speculation of this sort does crop up occasionally, it is as nothing compared to the roar of opprobrium directed at climate scientists – a few in particular – by the ‘sceptics’.

“The declining trend in the MXD in the dendro proxies from 1960 onwards.

Except they aren’t hidden.

They don’t apply to a TEMPERATURE GRAPH and are explicitly talked about in the science papers.”

That’s strange—all previous vicissitudes of the tree-rings were considered relevant to the “TEMPERATURE GRAPH,” weren’t they?

In fact, to the left of the 1960 mark, fluctuations in the maximum latewood density pretty much control the curve, don’t they? One might even say it’s a graph OF tree-ring growth… until 1960, anyway, might one not? Never mind what the graph is “about,” what is it a graph of—what are the data that draw the plot?

This is a matter of fact. The Spencer and Christy UAH debacle is the only time that a modern temperature record has been completely invalidated. And its curators were sceptics whose errors only came to light when their work was checked by other researchers.

“As long as you let them direct the conversation, you are playing their game, which is to direct attention away from the fact that they have no coherent scientific counter-argument to mount against the scientific consensus on AGW.”

Why would I play a game like that? AGW is perfectly plausible and acceptable to me.

“The declining trend in the MXD in the dendro proxies from 1960 onwards.”

So it’s a “decline” in “proxies”.

Decline. You might note that in the paragraph I quoted, it was explicitly mentioned that “decline” was just another term for “divergence”. (My guess being that decline indicates the direction of the divergence – but my guesses don’t matter.)

Proxies. Proxy for what? Oh, that would be temperature, would it not. And I note that being all scientificky ‘n’ stuff these stick in the mud scientists chuck out particular proxies when they clearly show that they’ve lost their value for that purpose – in this case temperature – when better evidence, such as modern thermometers show different results.

One hypothetical that fascinates me. It’s entirely possible that proxies of this kind, dendro, could diverge the other way given other aberrations in botanical, meteorological, ecological events in a given region. Just what form would they take, and how loud and prolonged, would the objections be if these, or other marginal trees, indicated faster or higher temperature increase than the instrumental records for the same period?

Would they object if the instrumental temperature had been used in these graphs by using the same “trick” of inserting that graph portion at the appropriate time period?
Would they object if the proxy temperature graph had been used for the whole time span “because the proxy had been accurate up until 1960″ even though it diverged strongly upwards of the instrumental record after that year?

Did Phil Jones “hide the decline”, as he claimed in an email to his colleagues?

No, “NOTHING WAS HIDDEN” according to Wow.

So Jones was lying?

“No,” according to Wow. “He was talking to colleagues.”

Well, that clears that up, doesn’t it?

He wasn’t telling the truth (says Wow); he wasn’t lying either; he was Talking To Colleagues.

Yes, but was he telling the truth to colleagues, or was he lying to them?

“No.

He was talking to colleagues.”

Oh my fucking God. You really are obtuse, Wow, aren’t you? …unless Heartland is paying you for this—in which case you’re the smartest in the room.

Perhaps it would help if we heard from one of Jones’ “colleagues.”

Dr Paul Dennis of the CRU writes:

“The point about the ‘Hide the Decline’ debate is germane to much of what we know about past climate of the last several millenia. There is a discrepancy between the modern tree ring data and the instrumental record. Assuming for the time being the instrumental record is robust then the conclusion one draws is that it is not possible to reconstruct past temperatures on the basis of tree ring data.

“The ‘hide the decline’ graph splices together the modern temperature record and a proxy temperature curve based very largely on tree ring data. But we have direct observation that tree rings don’t always respond as we might think to temperature thus shouldn’t be splicing the two together without a very large sign writ large which says ‘Caveat Emptor’.

“This is especially so when preparing material for NGO’s, policymakers etc.

“This is what Bishop Hill argues is indefensible and I agree with him.”

Did Phil Jones “hide the decline”, as he claimed in an email to his colleagues?

No, “NOTHING WAS HIDDEN” according to Wow.

Oh, so Jones was lying.

“No,” according to Wow.

“He was talking to colleagues.”

Well, that clears that up, doesn’t it?

He wasn’t telling the truth (says Wow); but he wasn’t lying either; he was Talking To Colleagues™.

Yes, but was he telling the truth to colleagues, or was he lying to them?

“No. He was talking to colleagues.”

Oh my fucking God. You really are obtuse, aren’t you Wow? …unless Heartland is paying you for all this—in which case you’re the smartest guy in the room.

Maybe it would help if we heard from one of Jones’ colleagues.

Dr Paul Dennis of the CRU writes:

“The point about the ‘Hide the Decline’ debate is germane to much of what we know about past climate of the last several millenia. There is a discrepancy between the modern tree ring data and the instrumental record. Assuming for the time being the instrumental record is robust then the conclusion one draws is that it is not possible to reconstruct past temperatures on the basis of tree ring data.

“The ‘hide the decline’ graph splices together the modern temperature record and a proxy temperature curve based very largely on tree ring data. But we have direct observation that tree rings don’t always respond as we might think to temperature thus shouldn’t be splicing the two together without a very large sign writ large which says ‘Caveat Emptor’.

“This is especially so when preparing material for NGO’s, policymakers etc.

“This is what Bishop Hill argues is indefensible and I agree with him.”

“Decline. You might note that in the paragraph I quoted, it was explicitly mentioned that “decline” was just another term for “divergence”. (My guess being that decline indicates the direction of the divergence – but my guesses don’t matter.)”

Yes, that’s all correct and well-known (except to Wow). The attribute of interest in the proxies went DOWN while temperatures went UP.

“People have asked why mainstream scientists are keeping silent on these issues. As a scientist who has largely kept silent, at least in public, I have more sympathy for silence than most people here. It’s not for the obvious reason, that speaking out leads to immediate attacks, not just from Gavin and friends, but also from some of the more excitable commentators here.

“Far more importantly most scientists are reluctant to speak out on topics which are not their field. We tend to trust our colleagues, perhaps unreasonably so, and are also well aware that most scientific questions are considerably more complex than outsiders think, and that it is entirely possible that we have missed some subtle but critical point.

“However, “hide the decline” is an entirely different matter. This is not a complicated technical matter on which reasonable people can disagree: it is a straightforward and blatant breach of the fundamental principles of honesty and self-criticism that lie at the heart of all true science. The significance of the divergence problem is immediately obvious, and seeking to hide it is quite simply wrong …

“The decision to hide the decline, and the dogged refusal to admit that this was an error, has endangered the credibility of the whole of climate science. If the rot is not stopped then the credibility of the whole of science will eventually come into question.”

Well, if I had to predict the reactions by some well-known-ish people who write at some websites/blogs, I reckon I’d be pretty well on the money with my guesses. (Several contributors at WUWT, Bishop’s Hill, Nova, Morano, McIntyre, Curry are the people I have in mind if you want specifics.) If I were so inclined, I might even trawl the bottom of these lakes to find suitable examples – but I’m not that bothered.

Basically the answers would be the reverse of what we’ve seen up until now. In the first case no question, let alone objection, would arise because such a graph would show a lower trajectory than my hypothetical dendro proxy data would show. Any email referring to a “trick” to “hide the incline” would have been ignored – probably never publicly dumped in the first place.

In the second hypothetical. Incandescent rage. Though there’d not be any “trick” or technique involved. It would be an entirely different issue. But it would certainly lead to vociferous demands that scientists use “reliable” and “modern” and “verifiable” temperature records. The very idea! of using ‘unreliable’ or ‘inconsistent’ correlations or ‘fancy-schmancy scientific footwork’ to justify using a proxy (spit!) record rather than the temperatures everyone! else uses for these purposes is dishonest!! and brings the whole enterprise of science into disrepute!!**#!*%! Disgraceful!

(Of course, in this hypothetical, there’d also be a lot of climate scientists pushing similar, but reasoned, arguments. They wouldn’t use the top row of their qwerty keyboards.)